Saturday, March 10, 2018

"The Vain Conversation"

Anthony Grooms is the author of Bombingham: A Novel and Trouble No More: Stories, both winners of the Lillian Smith Book Award for fiction. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, he has taught writing and American literature at universities in Ghana and Sweden and, since 1994, at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

On page 69 of The Vain Conversation, the protagonist Lonnie Henson, a 10 year old at the time, is involved in a knotty conversation with the philandering Vernon Venable, a local planter in 1946 Georgia. Venable, under the guise of teasing is trying to gain leverage on Lonnie who has recently stumbled upon him having sex in the woods with a prostitute. The conversation seesaws between gentle teasing and subtle threats. It confuses Lonnie, who is not sophisticated enough to follow Venable’s double entendres. Not only is this scene representative of the twisting uncertainty that entangles Lonnie morally and socially, but it is a pivotal scene. It drives the actions of the first part of the story, nags at Lonnie through for the next two decades, and returns to accuse him at the end.